His eyes were ablaze. His message was emphatic. Marcus would become the immoral man in the mountains, and he would do it for the love of his comrades.
I couldn’t let him.
I put a hand on his shoulder. He looked at it as though he’d bite it from my arm.
‘Marcus, listen to me.’ I tried. ‘What if these mountains were Iader? What if we were sent into our home town, with the same orders as we have here? Our old friends. Our old neighbours. Are they truly an enemy because one day someone writes a command, and orders it so?’
His eyes drove into my own like a blade. ‘This region has revolted against its lawful master. Against Rome.’
Rome. The city he had never seen. The idea for whom he would kill, and die.
‘No, Marcus.’ I had to try. ‘A leader and his men have revolted, not the region,’ I near pleaded in desperation. ‘Think, Marcus. The people we grew up with. They were good people, and loyal to Rome, were they not? Would you kill them without mercy? Would you condemn them for the actions of other men that they have never met? Never seen?’
I was asking the wrong man.
‘Yes,’ he told me simply. ‘Every one.’
A long breath escaped him, then. His eyes fell to the distant mountains. Somewhere, the ghost of my closest friend stirred. ‘I will not do it, brother,’ he almost whispered. ‘I will not see another of them fall. I will not have another slip away in my arms. For my men, I will kill every rebel, woman and child in this province and beyond, if that’s what it takes. I will do it for my men, I will do it for you, and I will not stop until I am sent to join those I have already failed.’
‘You haven’t failed anyone,’ I begged.
But the mask was back. A mask of iron, and hate. When he looked back at me, I saw pity. Pity that I couldn’t understand. Pity that I couldn’t be the man that Rome needed me to be.
‘You’re just tired, standard-bearer,’ my brother told me as though speaking to a stranger. ‘You should head back down to the valley, and get some rest.’
I felt as though he had driven his sword into my heart.
‘Marcus, don’t.’
He broke away from my hand on his shoulder. ‘I have to see to my men.’
He walked away. I wanted to follow, but my legs were concrete from grief. ‘Marcus!’ I called after the best part of myself. ‘Marcus! Talk to your commander. We can find a better way. There has to be a better way!’
He stopped, and turned. When he looked at me, I saw only disgust in his eyes. Shame at my weakness.
‘Leaders don’t talk,’ Marcus snorted. ‘They lead.’
He turned his back, and grief ran through every fibre of my being.
I had lost my brother to the mountains.
37
I took Marcus’s advice, and returned to the valley with the resupply column that same day, arriving late in the afternoon.
I soon wished that I hadn’t.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked a bloodied soldier who was helping a comrade to the aid station. Their faces were familiar to me.
‘Second Cohort got ambushed,’ the soldier told me, confirming my fears – these were men that I knew.
‘Which centuries?’ I asked quickly.
The man delivered the words I dreaded to hear. ‘First and Second.’
I ran towards the hospital. Dozens of wounded were being helped or carried there. I looked among them for Varo and Octavius. Instead I saw Iulius, a weathered soldier who had taken over Octavius’s section when my old friend had been promoted to optio.
There was a red slice across his upper arm.
‘An arrow,’ he told me, but I saw more pain in his face than such a weapon could have caused.
‘What?’ I asked. ‘Tell me!’
He didn’t answer at once, and dread climbed with hooks from the pit of my stomach.
I shook him. ‘Tell me!’
The soldier met my eyes. I saw tears in his.
‘Octavius is dead.’
I looked down at the body of my comrade.
Octavius lay on his back, an arrow through his throat. Eyes that had been bright with mirth now gazed at a blue sky as empty as the vessel that had carried my friend’s indomitable spirit.
‘You weren’t supposed to die,’ I told him, closing his eyes and brushing away the flies that sought to take treasure from tragedy.
I took my friend’s dead hand in my own. His sword, unbloodied, had fallen beside him.
‘You were a great brother,’ I told the man who had been with me since my first day as a recruit. ‘Do you remember when we first met? You complained I was taking too long in the latrine, and when I came out I tried to put you in it. The training staff caught us fighting and ordered us on to shit duty for a month.’ I laughed then. It was a choke, but it was happy.
‘I miss you already, you fucking bastard,’ I cursed, squeezing his dead flesh. ‘You weren’t supposed to die.’
And my comrade hadn’t died alone. With tears blurring my vision, I looked about me now. Amongst the rocks of a narrow defile, a dozen other soldiers were going through the same ritual that I was, saying goodbye to men that they knew better than their own families.
I realized then that Octavius was the furthest forward of them all. As an optio, his place was at the rear of the century, chaperoning the troops into formation, but his position was no mystery to me; it only made me more sad – Octavius must have stepped up when Varo had gone ahead with a section of men to scout the dangerous terrain ahead, and had not returned.
I looked over my shoulder. Iulius, arm yet to be bandaged, leaned back against a slab of rock. He had brought me to this place of stone, safe enough now that other centuries had pushed ahead so that we might give honour to the dead.
It took me two attempts to break the man from his trance. No doubt he was replaying the catastrophic moments. The screams. The chaos.
‘Standard-bearer?’
‘Tell me again what happened?’ I asked, looking back to the face of my fallen friend. I would not let go of his hand. I couldn’t.
‘We got sent on a patrol from the valley to investigate some smoke,’ Iulius began. ‘Us and the First Century in two columns—’
He stopped because I waved my free hand at him. ‘I don’t care about that. What happened to Octavius and Varo?’
The wounded man nodded. ‘Varo didn’t like the look of this route, so he went ahead with a section to try and find us a better way. We were a bit further back down the trail, then. There wasn’t much sign of them going back, so Octavius was just getting us going when the arrows started coming in.’
I looked at the arrow in his throat. ‘He died first?’
Iulius shook his head, and almost smiled. He had pride in the man who had once been his section commander. ‘Look at his shield.’
I did. Four arrows were embedded in the livery of our legion.
‘He stormed forwards to get us moving again. He knew we had to charge them to break the ambush.’
‘And did you?’
‘We did,’ Iulius confirmed. ‘Lost men doing it, and I think Octavius was one of the first, but if he hadn’t started that charge, there’d be more of us on the ground here. I tell you that as a fact.’
I looked at his dead face. ‘Leaders don’t talk,’ I said quietly. ‘They lead.’
‘What was that?’
I made no reply. Instead, with a silent plea of forgiveness, I let go of my friend’s hand, and got to my feet. ‘We need to find Varo and the others.’
Iulius grimaced, and looked at the sun – it was low in the sky. ‘It’s going to be getting dark soon,’ he informed me gently. ‘And…’